This application is related to co-pending co-assigned application, Ser. No. 782,426, filed Sept. 30, 1985, and the disclosure of said co-pending application is incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates generally to a support stand or tripod for an item of equipment, for example optical equipment such as a photographic, film or video camera or the like.
A known form of such a support stand comprises a head portion on which a device to be supported on the stand is mounted, with support legs extending downwardly away from the head portion. Each support leg comprises first and second tube portions in telescopic relationship, with the outer tube portion, that is to say, the tube portion of larger internal cross-section, being secured to the support head portion while the inner tube portion is disposed partly within the outer tube portion and extends therefrom at the lower end thereof. In other words, the outer tube portion constitutes the upper part of a leg and the inner tube portion constitutes the lower part. The support stand further comprises a fixing device for securing the two tube portions of each leg in a given position relative to each other, with the fixing device for each leg being disposed at or closely adjacent to the lower end of the outer tube portion. That means that it is at a distance from the support head portion, that almost corresponds to the length of the outer tube portion.
Arranging the fixing devices for the respective legs in that way gives rise to a number of disadvantages and difficulties. One of those is that, for actuating a fixing device, it is always necessary for the operator of the item of equipment supported on the stand to bend down from a relatively normal posture of using the equipment, for example for viewing through the viewfinder of a camera, to reach the fixing device which is disposed at a very much lower level. Now, in that situation the operator can generally only bend down to actuate the fixing device to fix a respective leg at a selected length, by ceasing to use the item of equipment, for example by taking his eye away from the viewfinder of the camera which is mounted on the head portion of the support stand, or by taking his eye away from some other item of optical equipment which is similarly mounted thereon, with the result that obviously he can no longer view the scene of which he wished to take a photograph. In other words, having selected a given scene or object to be photographed, in order to adjust the support stand to the height that is most appropriate to that scene or object, the operator is then required to cease viewing the scene or object while setting the height of the stand. That therefore means that he is often required to repeat the process of viewing the scene or object and making an adjustment to the height of the support stand, before he arrives at the correct setting for his purposes.
Another disadvantage of the above-indicated support stand construction is that, when the inner tube portion of each leg is entirely retracted into the outer tube portion, the fixing device on the leg is very close to the ground or other support surface on which the stand is supported, so that when such a stand is used for outside work, for example for working in a field or under like conditions, it is often almost impossible to avoid the fixing devices on the respective legs becoming fouled with dirt and the like. However, fouled fixing devices can give rise to difficulties and failures in operation of the support stand as well as resulting in dirty hands, which is generally undesirable bearing in mind that the operator may be using delicate optical equipment.